Woman suffered complications from abortion pill, now wants Supreme Court to decide its future
Elizabeth Gillette was six to seven weeks pregnant when she took the abortion pill and suffered complications: She went into labor and delivered the fetus in its amniotic sack surrounded by blood in a bathroom.
Shocked and upset, she flushed the fetus down the toilet. Ms. Gillette said she has post-traumatic stress disorder as a result.
She is asking the Supreme Court to step in and protect women who are not under medical supervision while taking the drug. Ms. Gillette received the medication from an abortion clinic and took it at home.
On Tuesday, the justices will hear arguments over the Food and Drug Administration’s changes to the distribution of mifepristone, which is used with misoprostol to terminate a pregnancy.
“I reached down and pulled out of my own body the amniotic sack — perfectly round, transparent. And inside was my perfectly formed baby, with eyes and recognizable fingers and toes. And I had to choose at that moment what to do with this baby that nobody told me I would see. They told me I would see blood, maybe just a double period,” Ms. Gillette told The Washington Times.
“I ultimately decided to flush my baby down the toilet into a septic tank, which is something that psychologically does some damage.”
She said the bleeding continued for more than a month and she had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic she was given because of a lack of proper medical screening. Ms. Gillette suffers from emotional trauma and requires a service dog.
“No matter how you feel about abortion … women like me exist. Women have found themselves on the bathroom floor just like me in pools of blood,” she said. “I really hope through this process that the Supreme Court will understand that we are here and we are suffering.”
The FDA moved in 2021 to eliminate the number of in-person doctor visits needed to obtain the drug and to allow it to be used longer into pregnancy, from seven weeks to 10 weeks. The change in the gestational period was adopted in 2016.
The Justice Department is closely watching the case as it appeals a lower court ruling that restricted the use of mifepristone.
The legal challenge was initially brought by pro-life medical providers represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious liberty legal group. The providers say they have seen women harmed by taking the drug.
Kellie Fiedorek, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, says the FDA violated the Administrative Procedures Act when it eliminated the three medical appointments required for women to obtain the pill.
“Those three in-person doctor visits were required by the FDA to check women for ectopic pregnancies, severe bleeding, life-threatening infections, and yet the FDA decided to remove all those safeguards, even the last one, without even adequate studies to support it and endanger women’s health and safety in doing so,” Ms. Fiedorek said. “Doctors, medical associations said, ‘Enough is enough. We have to hold the FDA accountable.’”
Federal officials say the drug has been used throughout five presidential administrations and more than half of American women who choose to end pregnancies use mifepristone.
They argue that the medical providers lack standing to bring the lawsuit because their legal injuries are “speculative and attenuated.”
“Studies involving tens of thousands of women show that the serious adverse events that could give rise to the emergency situations potentially implicating respondents’ objections are extremely rare: Hospitalization, serious infections, and bleeding requiring a transfusion each occur in between 0% and 0.7% of cases,” the Justice Department wrote in its brief.
Original Online Source: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/mar/24/elizabeth-gillette-had-complications-from-abortion